"Parsley" is based on an historical event that occurred in the
Dominican Republic in 1937. Rafael Trujillo, the dictator at the time, selected for
execution twenty thousand Haitian blacks who worked side-by-side in the cane fields with
Dominicans. He did this in a very bizarre and ultimately creative manner. The Haitians
spoke French Creole, in which  unlike Spanish  you dont roll the r, so
the r sounds like an l. Trujillo had all the cane workers pronounce perejil,
Spanish for parsley. Those who could not pronounce it correctly  whoever said "pelejil"
instead of "perejil"  were Haitian and were executed. That he had
them pronounce their own death sentence, this ultimate little twist in cruelty, was what
haunted me. . . .

Here I was, at the White House at the highest administrative level of power, and I
wanted to talk about the uses to which power has been put. I also wanted to talk about how
necessary it is in all avenues of life to be able to imagine the other person. In that
poem, Ive tried to help us understand how Trujillo arrived at this word  not
just to say that he was a horrible dictator, but to make us realize that evil can be
creative. . . .

. . . It was an after-dinner event, and when I introduced the poem there was a moment
of tension in the room  I think people were worried that this was not going to be
politically appropriate, but that changed fairly rapidly. Having been invited to the White
House, I felt that I should really show what poetry could do and that, in fact, it covers
many different aspects of human joy and triumph and tragedy. That was one reason for
reading this poem, and in the end I think was very well received.

From James Haba, Ed. The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets, Bill Moyers (New
York: Doubleday, 1995), 127-128.